Democracy in America is besieged today. It is so at root because of the outcome of the outcome of the debate at the Constitutional Convention: the Federalists won, the Anti-Federalists lost.
The discourse of the pre-Revolution British settlers of North America was florid, paranoid, and wrong. They feared conceptually the concentration of power in a king out of all proportion to the reality of the acts of power of King George III. Psychotic though this pre-Revolutionary discourse was, it was also coherent as a whole: democracy, "people rule". In a potent distillation of two of their most important concepts, James Madison wrote that hitherto Power, the concept and the practice, granted charters of Liberty, but with his, Madison's, generation in North America Liberty would grant charters of Power. Turned it on its head. Madison was correct was correct all the way from the Declaration of Independence up to the Constitutional Convention.
But then, but then. Came the Constitutional Convention--same people now; same as had just ended "tyrant" George III's power over them Liberty would grant charters to Power? No, at least not entirely yes. Reading the Federalist Papers is like watching a video of a convenience store robbery: you know how it ends but can't stop it. The Anti-Federalists made all of the arguments that both Feds and Anti's- had made pre-Revolution: Power was never to be trusted, therefore it must never be concentrated. But to their horrified amazement the Feds, once Anti-Feds, now saw the need for a strong Chief Executive. "But what about...You just said...", Anti-Feds."You must trust in the people," Feds. "But...," Anti-Feds. "The difference is that our people are virtuous," Feds. Belief in their own virtue--Beeg Thing by the Brit-Americans. What's Pa.'s motto? "Virtue, Liberty, and Independence." Professor Bernard Bailyn, referred to above, saw the hypocrisy. But he elided over it as he did the pre-Revolution disturbed thought. So revered is Professor Bailyn and so accepted are his views that positing the following is even for the undersigned, a Noted Idiot, and even at this time, two years after his death, like asking to be struck by a thunderbolt, viz: It may be that Professor Bailyn wrote with guile.
Be that as it may, the Federalists won at the Constitutional Convention. The Anti-Feds contested elections in the new U.S.A. for awhile (James Monroe was one of them. Monroe Doctrine sound like modest conception of presidential power?) but soon went into total, permanent eclipse. The powerful chief executive created by the Federalists came to be and has only grown more powerful with time, so powerful that Power again determines in what form and where Liberty is to exist, or if it is to exist at all.
